Administration's Desegregation Record Attacked

Even as President Reagan moved in an unprecedented way
to replace two of its six members, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
last week issued a report sharply critical of the Administration's
recent actions in school desegregation and other issues involving
minority students.

The report, entitled With All Deliberate Speed: 1954-19??, briefly
traces the enforcement of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme
Court decision outlawing segregated schools. It concludes that, while
substantial progress has been made toward eliminating illegal
segregation, federal enforcement efforts slowed considerably beginning
with the Nixon Administration and have been inadequate ever since.

In the 1978-79 school year, the report says, 60.2 percent of all
minority students in the nation attended schools that were at least
50-percent minority, and 37 percent attended schools that were at least
80-percent minority. Metropolitan desegregation plans, the report
maintains, should be developed to reduce the isolation of poor and
minority students in the inner-city schools.

Recent actions by the Justice Department are "of serious concern to
the Commission," the document says. Arthur S. Flemming, chairman of the
commission, further charged in a news conference that the
Administration's policies on civil rights in education are contrary to
the Constitution.

Justice Department's Decisions

Examples, cited in the report, are the Justice Department's
decisions:

To support, before the Supreme Court, a Washington State law banning
locally initiated busing for desegregation. The department, in
lower-court proceedings, previously opposed the law.

To accept, last August, a desegregation plan for the Chicago schools
which one month earlier the department had rejected as incomplete.

To abandon efforts to obtain a court-ordered interdistrict
desegregation plan in the Houston area.

To drop its support of a Texas suit claiming that the children of
illegal aliens are entitled to a free public education.

Policy of Deep Concern

"Taken together," the commission's report says, "the positions
espoused by the Department of Justice in these four cases appear to
reflect a policy which cannot help but be of deep concern to those who
believe that, as the Supreme Court found in Brown v. Board of
Education, segregated educational facilities are inherently
unequal."

The report also was critical of Congressional attempts to curb
busing for desegregation. During the current session of Congress, such
efforts have focused on two approaches: limiting the federal judges'
authority to reassign students to schools outside their neighborhoods
and forbidding the Justice Department to seek busing as a remedy for
segregation.

"Such Congressional proposals, if enacted, would have a detrimental
effect on efforts to provide equality of opportunity," the report
maintains. "The proposals suggest to the American public that the
constitutional issue remains unsettled, although it was clearly decided
by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 when the Court
declared that state-imposed racial segregation deprived public-school
students of the equal protection of the laws....

"Further," the report continues, "these efforts present a false
picture to the country. School transportation in support of
desegregation is presented as a phenomenon that must be stopped because
it is ineffective and detrimental to the education of America's
schoolchildren.''

Largely on the basis of research by the sociologists Robert L. Crain
and Rita E. Mahard, the report claims that significant improvements
have been made in the achievement and attitudes of minority students in
desegregated schools.

Shortly after holding a news conference to release the desegregation
report last Monday, the commission's chairman, Arthur S. Flemming,
learned that President Reagan intended to remove him from the post he
has held since 1974.

Mr. Reagan is the first President to replace commission members in
the absence of resignations.

The President's nominee for the chairmanship is Clarence Pendleton,
president of the Urban League of San Diego. Mr. Pendleton is described
as a conservative Republican whose views on civil-rights enforcement
are consonant with Mr. Reagan's.

No Reaction from Reagan

The President, White House spokesmen said, was not reacting to Mr.
Flemming's support of affirmative action, busing for school
desegregation, and other traditionally liberal causes. Instead, the
spokesmen said, Mr. Reagan was simply exercising his prerogative to
name members to the independent, six-member commission, which was
established by Congress in 1957 as a fact-finding agency.

Mr. Flemming, who served as secretary of Health, Education and
Welfare during the Eisenhower Administration, charged that the
President's decision would compromise the commission's independence

Dismissals Not Directly Related

The Reagan Administration also announced plans to replace
Commissioner Stephen Horn, president of California State University at
Long Beach, with Mary Louise Smith, a former chairman of the Republican
National Committee.

One source at the commission said the dismissals did not appear to
be connected directly to the school-desegregation report. But, the
source said, "There is some feeling that it happened because of
discontent with the pro-civil-rights posture of Mr. Flemming."